Lucius the Club | Page 9

was no sign of life whatever. Only the closed
door of the club. The famous Girliebar, before which many a provincial
punter, about to see his first live stripper, had paused and trembled with
anticipation.
I paused too, but then I told myself to get on with it.
I unbuttoned the coat, took hold of the shotgun properly, and tried the
door.
It opened, so I went in.
The bar was an L-shaped room, and after my recent visit I knew where
the poker players would be. Round the corner. And now I could hear a
murmuring of voices, which meant that I could forget that last faint
hope that tonight they had decided not to bother playing after all.

I went around the corner and found them all there. They were having a
bit of a laugh, because the last hand had seen somebody do something
foolish. But they stopped laughing when I appeared.
One of them saw me. I'm not sure now who it was. But it wasn't Billy.
'Wotcher, Luce,' the man said. 'Wot you doin' 'ere?'
I ignored him. And now they were all looking at me. I raised the
shotgun and they all saw it. They went silent and still.
Billy Marwell was not where I'd hoped he would be. I'd hoped he
would be straight ahead of me. But he wasn't. He was to the left.
'On your feet, Billy,' I said.
'Wot?' He looked at me as if he couldn't believe his ears. 'Wot you say?'
'Stand up,' I told him. 'Now.'
And he was dumb enough to do so. If he'd cut and run at that point,
gone round behind the bar, perhaps, and thrown bottles at me, he might
have got away. But I was just Lucius the Club. Even if I was carrying a
shotgun. What did he have to fear from me?
He stood up, pushing his chair back and moving to one side.
Which was exactly what I wanted, because now he was separate from
the other four men.
So I shot him.

*
At this distance in time I can't pretend to remember every detail. But
Billy went down, and the others ducked for cover, scrambling on all
fours, I think - some of them - for shelter behind the bar.

I went over and looked at Billy and I could see immediately that he was
dead. There was no way he was ever going to recover from a wound
like that.
So I turned around and left.
I didn't hurry. I walked slowly out of the bar and down the stairs. No
one followed me. I took out the empty cartridge, put it in my pocket,
and hid the gun under my coat.
When I reached the street door I opened it a fraction, found that the
street was empty, and then walked home.
I went into the living-room and returned to watching television. I hadn't
been gone long. Twenty minutes at the most.
About eleven o'clock, I heard voices on the stairs. I turned down the
sound on the television and went out into the hall to say goodbye to the
Judge. It was only polite. I shook his hand, and called him Sir. He liked
that.

*
The next morning was much like any other Monday morning. I slept
well, oddly enough. Then I did some Oxford work, and after lunch
Mama suggested that I should go out and test the temperature - as she
put it.
So I went out.
The shooting of Billy Marwell had been too late for the morning papers,
but I wandered over to the local newsagent and bought the Evening
Standard. Rather to my surprise there was no report of a shooting on
the front page. The headlines were devoted to a possible strike by the
Tube drivers. Only on page two was there a paragraph saying 'Man
Shot in Soho'. Nobody, it seemed, was interested in reading about Billy
Marwell, a small-time crook who had been gunned down, it was

thought, as part of a gang war.
I found myself thinking that this was really rather disappointing. So I
wandered off into the street market, as I often did. And there I had the
first inkling that Mama had been right. She had said that every man
present when I shot Billy Marwell would tell everyone he knew what
had happened - everyone bar the police, of course - and when I went to
buy some fruit from a man I'd known for years, he actually flinched
when he saw me. He stepped back a pace, mouth dropping open.
I was rather proud of that. I winked at him, and he tried to grin, but
failed. And there were one or two other reactions too. Out of the